It’s The Final Countdown

 

It’s the start of a brand new month (well it was yesterday when I was supposed to submit this post), and the countdown for the re-release of my debut fantasy novel, The Exercise Of Vital Powers, has begun. I’ve been really busy over the last month, not only with ensuring that the book goes back on sale in the best possible state this summer, but also with preparations for the marketing campaign necessary to give TEOVP the opportunity for sales success that the first edition never had a hope of achieving. Part of me feels as though the effort, time and money I’ve been putting in to making the second edition successful should have been done last year for the original release. But in truth, I wouldn’t change anything about the way I went about things in 2017, even though I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I learned so much from my experience last year, and those lessons have now put me in a much better position to find and win over an audience for TEOVP and all my future writing endeavours.

The Second Coming Is Near At Hand

 

If you cast your mind back to the beginning of the year, you may recall that personal problems caused me to postpone all my 2018 publishing plans until further notice; the main casualty being the second edition of my debut novel, The Exercise Of Vital Powers, which I had intended to release in time for the first anniversary of the original publication. I also promised to keep you updated on the status of the book if and when the situation changed. Well, that day has arrived, and today is that day.

Update: Getting Back On Track… Sort Of

 

Hey, I’m back. I wish I could say that my life is completely out of the doldrums but it’s not. Nonetheless, I can’t just sit about waiting for things to change for the better. It is the start of a brand new month and time to kick on with the writing gig. So, as of this week I’m resuming work on the second draft of my “untitled sequel” to The Exercise Of Vital Powers. I don’t currently have plans to publish it (or anything else) this year so I feel no pressure to finish writing it ASAP, though I do hope to have it wrapped up this summer then immediately starting work on Book Three.

Update: What 2018 Has In Store (Or Not)

 

To say that life hasn’t always been kind to me would be an understatement. At the risk of sounding like someone suffering from a persecution complex, my life has been tormenting me mercilessly for the past quarter of a century. What kept me going through all the tribulations was convincing myself there was nothing I could do about the crap life throws my way, and that these things happened to test me. Inevitably, this coping mechanism couldn’t continue to work forever. Sadly, I am only human; I can only endure so much before I eventually break, and by the end of last November I had reached my breaking point. I struggled on as best as I could into early December, because I had commitments I needed to honour. But once I’d done so, I had to admit defeat; life had finally got the better of me and I couldn’t cope with things as they were.

What The Future Holds In A Post-SPFBO World

Credit: Laura M. Hughes

 

Greetings folks! This is the post I delayed from yesterday, announcing that the inevitable has finally come to pass; the #SPFBO adventure of my debut fantasy novel The Exercise Of Vital Powers reached its conclusion at the weekend after missing out on an unlikely place in the final, having been pushed into second place by Devil’s Night Dawning by Damien Black.